Look at the sponsors of this organization. What is White Privilege? There is a community agreement. Training is available from their institute. Need more? Here is a manifesto on White Privilege.
There is more you need to know.
Students Out of Control as St. Paul Schools Spend Millions on ‘White Privilege’ Training
“Students are out of control because there are no real consequences for their actions.”
EAG News reports that in 2010, the St. Paul, Minnesota school district contracted with the Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco-based organization that tries to help public schools deal with achievement and disciplinary issues involving black students.
But PEG claims that the American education system is built around “white privilege” and that black students will only achieve if school curricula are customized to meet their cultural specifications. PEG also rejects the concept of using suspensions or expulsions to discipline black students.
Since 2010, St. Paul schools spent about $1.9 million on PEG consultations services, in addition to “matched amounts” of another more than $1 million on PEG, without explaining what that term means.
Not long after PEG started working with St. Paul school officials, crucial policy changes were made:
Special needs students with behavioral issues were mainstreamed into regular classrooms, a position openly advocated by PEG.
Student suspensions were replaced by “time outs,” and school officials starting forgiving or ignoring violence and other unacceptable behavior.
The result, EAG notes, “has been general chaos throughout the district, with far too many students out of control because they know there are no real consequences for their actions.”
A local publication called CityPages recently told the story, for example, of Becky McQueen, an educator at St. Paul’s Harding High School:
Last spring, when she stepped into a fight between two basketball players, one grabbed her shoulder and head, throwing her aside. The kid was only sent home for a couple of days.
In March, when a student barged into her class, McQueen happened to be standing in the doorway and got crushed into a shelf. The following week, two boys came storming in, hit a girl in the head, then skipped back out. One of them had already been written up more than 30 times.
Yet another student who repeatedly drops into her class has hit kids and cursed at an aide, once telling McQueen he would “fry” her ass. She tried to make a joke of it — ‘Ooh, I could use a little weight loss.’ Her students interjected: ‘No, that means he’s gonna kill you.’”
McQueen now has her students use a secret knock on the classroom door, so she will know who to allow in. She told CityPages:
There are those that believe that by suspending kids we are building a pipeline to prison. I think that by not, we are. I think we’re telling these kids you don’t have to be on time for anything, we’re just going to talk to you. You can assault somebody and we’re gonna let you come back here.
At John A. Johnson Elementary on the East Side, several teachers, who asked to remain anonymous, describe anything but a learning environment. Students run up and down the hallways, slamming lockers and tearing posters off the walls. They hit and swear at each other, upend garbage cans under teachers’ noses.
Nine teachers at Ramsey Middle School have quit since the beginning of this school year. Some left for other districts. Others couldn’t withstand the escalating anarchy.
In mid-April, staff at Battle Creek Elementary penned a letter to their principal over “concerns about building wide safety, both physical and emotional, as well as the deteriorating learning environment.”
A week later, the principal announced that he would be transferred next year.
One despondent teacher told CityPages,
We have students who will spend an hour in the hallway just running and hiding from people, like it’s a game for them. A lot of them know no one is going to stop them, so they just continue.
Families are now trying to escape the district schools:
Over the past four years, as PEG has cast its influence in St. Paul, the number of students living in the district but attending non-district schools, has increased from about 9,000 to 12,000, according to Joe Nathan, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Center for School Change.
Two-thirds of those students come from low income families, or families of color, so it’s not just a typical case of “white flight,” Nathan said.
Nathan told the Star Tribune that
a significant number of families are saying their children do not feel safe in the schools. They don’t feel safe even going to the bathroom.
As one recently published story on better-ed.org put it, “Given the recent (and probably ongoing) turmoil in St. Paul Public Schools, it’s time to ask questions about Pacific Educational Group.”
Sounds like it’s too late for that.
